This invention relates to swing arm style mail insertion machines, and more particularly to high speed insertion of products, such as compact disks, computer diskettes, credit cards, keys, etc., into envelopes with a swing arm style mail insertion machine.
High speed insertion machines have been used for many years to insert relatively flat and flexible paper items such as bills, envelopes for returning payment of the bill, account information, coupons, and advertising materials into a common envelope for mailing to a recipient.
FIGS. 1 and 2 depict one type of such a high speed insertion machine, known as a xe2x80x9cmulti-station, swing-arm-style mail insertion machinexe2x80x9d 10. The multi-station, swing-arm-style machine 10 includes a raceway 12 having a conveyor 14 therein that sequentially moves items 17 placed into the raceway 12 from hoppers 19 at a series of insertion stations 16 located at a rear side 18 of the raceway 12, for insertion into an envelope 20, as the conveyor 14 moves in the direction indicated by the arrow 22. The items are moved from the hopper 19 to the raceway 12 at each station 16 by a swing-arm 24, having an upper end fixedly attached for rotation therewith to a swing arm shaft 26. As shown in FIG. 2, the swing arm shaft 26 is pivotably mounted for angular movement about a swing arm shaft axis 28 between a rear angular position 30 and a front angular position 32 of the swing arm shaft 26 and swing arm 24. The distal end (i.e. the lower end as shown in FIG. 2) of the swing arm 24 includes gripping fingers 34 for grasping one of the items 17 in the hopper 19 at the station 16, when the swing arm shaft 26 and swing arm 24 are in the rear angular position 30, and for dropping the grasped item 17 into the raceway 12 as the swing arm shaft 26 and swing arm 24 move from the rear angular position 30 to the front angular position 32.
Swing-arm style insertion machines 10 of the type described above are commonly used to fill envelopes with relatively flat and flexible paper items of the type listed above at rates up to 10,000 pieces per hour.
In recent years it has also become desirable to insert products such as compact disks (CDs), computer diskettes, stamps, credit cards, keys, match books, pencils or pens, etc., into envelopes for mailing with or in the same manner as the paper items that the swing-arm style insertion machines 10 were designed to handle. The gripping fingers 34 and hoppers 19 at the stations 16 of prior swing-arm style insertion machines 10 cannot handle such products, however. Even if the gripping fingers 34 and hoppers 19 of prior machines could feed such products, it would be undesirable to lose the ability to insert flat paper items 17 at an insertion station 16 used for inserting the product.
In one prior approach, the products are fed manually by hand, into the raceway 12 from the front side 36 of the raceway 12, at one or more of the stations 16, by a person operating the machine 10. With this approach, the rate at which the machine 10 can fill envelopes 20 is greatly reduced. Reliability of inserting the product is entirely dependent upon the skill, trustworthiness, and alertness of the person operating the machine 10. It is also not desirable for safety reasons to have the operator reaching into the raceway 12 with the swing arms 24 moving rapidly back and forth between the front and rear angular positions 32, 30.
In another approach, a stand-alone insertion machine, operating independently from the swing-arm machine 10, is used for inserting the product from the front side 36 of the raceway 12 at one or more of the stations 16. Because the stand-alone machine operates independently from the swing-arm machine 10, setting and maintaining the timing of insertion from the stand-alone machine to coordinate properly with movement of the swing arm 24 is difficult. It is typically necessary, therefore, to slow the swing-arm machine 10 down considerably to ensure proper timing of insertion of the product. It is also typically necessary to closely monitor the insertion operation to ensure that the standalone machine remains properly timed with respect to the swing-arm machine 10, and to stop and reset the two machines periodically. There is also typically no common means for monitoring and controlling the performance of both the swing-arm machine 10 and stand-alone machine, to shut down the machines and alert an operator if the hoppers 19 on the swing-arm machine 10 or the stand-alone machine need to be refilled, or a mis-feed condition occurs, necessitating high labor content for an operator to closely monitor operation of both machines.
What is needed, therefore, is an improved method and apparatus for feeding products such as those described above into envelopes, with a swing-arm-style mail insertion machine.
Our invention provides an improved method and apparatus for operating a swing-arm-style mail insertion machine, by fixedly attaching an actuator arm apparatus to the swing arm shaft of the swing arm insertion machine for feeding a product from a front side of a raceway of the swing-arm-style machine into the raceway. The actuator arm is configured for gripping a product from the front of the raceway of the swing-arm machine when the swing arm shaft is in a front angular position, and for placing the product into the raceway as the swing arm shaft pivots from the front angular position to a rear angular position.
Our actuator arm apparatus can be installed at a station of the swing-arm machine and used simultaneously with a swing-arm also installed at the same station, with the swing-arm depositing a first item into the raceway as the swing arm shaft pivots from the rear to the front, and the actuator arm apparatus depositing a product into the raceway as the swing arm shaft pivots from the front to the rear angular position.
Because our actuator arm device is attached to and operated by the swing arm shaft of the swing-arm insertion machine, the method and apparatus of our invention make it possible to automatically feed and insert products into envelopes at very high rates of feed up to 10,000 pieces per hour, in place of, or in conjunction with, the flat paper type of inserts for which such swing-arm insertion machines were originally designed.
Some forms of our invention may also include automatic controls for monitoring proper insertion of the products, and shutting down the swing-arm machine so that corrective action can be taken. Our invention may also include utilization of a front mounted product feeder channel that can be readily mounted on the front side of the raceway, and adapted to feed a wide variety of products.
The foregoing and other features and advantages of our invention will become further apparent from the following detailed description of exemplary embodiments, read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. The detailed description and drawings are merely illustrative of our invention rather than limiting, the scope of the invention being defined by the appended claims and equivalents thereof.